IMPEACHMENT: THE POLLS; Public Support for the President, and for Closure, Emerges Unshaken

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A solid majority of Americans want the Senate to resolve President Clinton's impeachment case without a trial and without removing him from office, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. A majority of the respondents disapprove of the House's decision to impeach Mr. Clinton but, now that it has done so, believe he should be punished no further, the poll showed.

The poll, which began right after the House voted the first article of impeachment on Saturday, and continued into this evening, found that the more than 12 hours of debate about the perjury and obstruction of justice charges had no effect on the public's opinion of the President or the case against him. Mr. Clinton's popularity remains as high as it has been at any point of the six years of his Presidency, while the public view of the Republican Party continues to plummet.

Two out of three Americans now oppose Mr. Clinton's removal from office, as they did in the weeks before the hearings. Nine out of 10 respondents said they had heard nothing during the two days of televised hearings -- in which Republicans painstakingly offered their case against Mr. Clinton -- that had shifted their view of the case.

The Times/CBS News poll suggests that almost a year after the initial reports of Mr. Clinton's relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky, the public continues to be almost completely at odds with much of Washington's political establishment over the import and significance of Mr. Clinton's affair, and attempts by an independent counsel and Republicans in Congress to prove he tried to cover it up.

And it provided one more piece of evidence of the startling political resilience of Mr. Clinton: one day after he became the second President in the nation's history to be impeached, 72 percent of respondents said they approved of how he was handling his job. Mr. Clinton's job approval rating actually increased since last week, when it was 66 percent.

The telephone poll involved 1,215 adults nationwide and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. All respondents had been previously interviewed last week, as a way of measuring changes in public perception by the House impeachment hearings.

The Times/CBS News poll comes as the case against Mr. Clinton moves from the House, which voted two impeachment counts against him on Saturday, to the Senate for a trial next year.

One of the biggest political concerns of Mr. Clinton's advisers is that the impeachment vote might encourage a round of demands for his resignation. But the poll found only limited support for Mr. Clinton's resignation: 32 percent of respondents said it would be better for the nation if the President stepped down, while 65 percent said he should finish his term. Those figures mirror the proportion of Americans who believe he should be forced from office.

There has been little evidence to date that Congressional Republicans were considering polls in deciding how to proceed with this case. This poll found again that the Republican Party was paying a political price for its pursuit of Mr. Clinton.

The Republican Party was viewed unfavorably by 58 percent of respondents, up from 52 percent last week. That is the worst standing the party has posted in the 14 years since The Times and CBS first began asking the question.

Barely one-third of respondents saw Congressional Republicans as being in touch with the views of the nation, while three-fifths said they believed the Republicans were pursuing the case for purely partisan motives: to damage Mr. Clinton and the Democratic Party.

A CBS News poll on Friday found additional evidence of another kind of deterioration in the public's view of Congress: only 41 percent of respondents said they believe Congress shares the public's moral values, down from 58 percent in September. This is one of the few areas in which Mr. Clinton fares poorly: the same CBS poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans did not believe that Mr. Clinton shared their moral values.

The Times/CBS poll suggests slight shifts in public perceptions of the case from Saturday to Sunday. For example, 61 percent of respondents on Saturday said that impeachment is punishment enough for what Mr. Clinton has done; that changed to 53 percent by today. Over two days, 57 percent of the respondents said they believe that Mr. Clinton has been punished enough.

There was also a drop over the two days in the number of Americans who expect the Senate to remove Mr. Clinton; down from 35 percent on Saturday to 26 percent today.

The poll found that the public as a whole -- with the exception being Republicans -- held fairly consistent views on Mr. Clinton and the impeachment process. Sixty percent of respondents disapproved of the House impeachment vote.

Nearly two-thirds said the Senate should not put Mr. Clinton on trial, but should instead work out a compromise that might involve, for example, a censure or a fine. More than half of the respondents said they feared that a Senate trial would harm the nation.

And if there is a trial, 68 percent of the respondents said the Senate should not remove Mr. Clinton from office. About half of all Americans now expect the Senate to hold a trial, but only 31 percent expect the Senate to remove Mr. Clinton.

Mr. Clinton's high approval rating might seem surprising, but in fact it is consistent with the entire polling history of this incident. Mr. Clinton has always seemed to do better following some event or disclosure in the nearly year-long Lewinsky case. His previous spikes in popularity came in January, after the public first learned of the accusations against him, and in August, after he acknowledged that he had had an affair with Ms. Lewinsky, his previous denials notwithstanding.

How the Poll Was Conducted

The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll is based on telephone interviews conducted on Saturday and yesterday with 1,215 adults across the United States. They included 661 on Saturday and 554 yesterday.

All interviews took place after the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Clinton.

This survey was organized as a tracking poll, with individual daily samples, which are devised to capture any day-to-day shifts in public opinion as the public absorbed the events concerning impeachment. All respondents were previously interviewed last week.

The original sample of telephone exchanges called was randomly selected by a computer from a complete list of more than 42,000 active residential exchanges across the country.

Within each exchange, random digits were added to form a complete telephone number, thus permitting access to both listed and unlisted numbers. Within each household, one adult was designated by a random procedure to be the respondent for the survey.

The results have been weighted to take account of household size and number of telephone lines into the residence and to adjust for variations in the sample relating to geographic region, sex, race, age, and education.

In theory, in 19 cases out of 20 the results based on such samples (combining both days) will differ by no more than three percentage points in either direction from what would have been obtained by seeking out all American adults.

For smaller sub-groups, the margin of sampling error is larger. For example, for either Saturday's or yesterday's results taken alone it is plus or minus four to five percentage points.

In addition to sampling error, the practical difficulties of conducting any survey of public opinion may introduce other sources of error into the poll. Variations in the wording and order of questions, for example, may lead to somewhat different results.